Ali LaBelle Creative LLC

There are few things I love more than a little gourmet market, but really, I hold space in my heart for grocery shopping in all its forms. I think the grocery store is to me what it must feel like for a musician to go to Guitar Center or an interior designer to go to the flea market—the ultimate place to stumble on a little something that might inspire a hit record or an AD-worthy home. In my case, it’s a really good snack plate.

Greetings from the end of August (and thank god for it.) This month will go down in my personal history as one of the longest, workiest months of all time thanks to several weeks of shoots for my book (!), never-ending strings of 100-degree days, a weekend of full-body stress hives, and a Pasta Girlfriend event (tonight!) that I just casually decided to throw into the mix. I’m feeling creatively fulfilled, overwhelmingly excited, and completely exhausted in equal measure.

Welcome back to The Museum, a new-ish column on À La Carte that hands us a map to a gallery of the objects, ideas, and references that make up a person’s visual world, from the entrance hall to the gift shop. My next guest is someone you’ve seen on À La Carte before: Annie Meyers-Shyer is back! When I interviewed Annie in 2024, she was midway through construction on her Beverly Hills home, This Oak House.

I have a complicated relationship with the color pink. I think most designers (or just anyone aware of color trends) can relate to the fixation-to-visceral-rejection pipeline a color can take. It’s like when you eat Greek yogurt every morning for breakfast and then suddenly, without warning, your trusty 2% Fage is utterly revolting. Sometimes that shift comes from overuse, a negative association or memory, or the color’s place in the trend cycle at any given moment.

LA! I’m having a big party in Silver Lake on Friday, August 28th! Pasta, cocktails, and sunset views. Details and tickets here. A couple of years ago, on a solo trip to LACMA, I watched a toddler beeline it, sticky fingers first, towards David Hockney’s Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio(1980). The look on his mom’s face was equal parts horror and resignation—she knew she’d never get to him in time.

RECENT ACQUISITIONS My friends at Bucatini launched a collection of hand-painted plates by Ceramiche Nicola Fasano a couple of weeks ago, and I immediately purchased a one-of-a-kind face plate before anyone else could grab the one I wanted. I’m in the middle of a dinnerware hunt right now as I work on props for my book shoots next month, so I’m considering it a business expense.

Last weekend, my cookbook club assembled for our twelfth dinner in my friend Victoria’s backyard. We’ve been meeting on a near-quarterly basis for three years now, and as the club founder and self-appointed president, it’s one of my most treasured extracurricular activities. This one was one of our best yet: perfect weather, a solid book pick, and a spread that looked like it came from the kitchen in Call Me By Your Name. I made a tomato tarte tatin that, against all odds, was delicious.

On the Fourth of July, I was lounging in a park with some friends when my sister asked what we’d each do for work if money wasn’t a thing. I said I’d be a travel influencer, but not one who makes frenzied TikToks in crowded places; I’d be more like a travel personality—someone who stays in fancy hotels and dishes about the mini bar selection and the room service menu and the quality of the sheets.

At the end of last summer, I closed out Love Island season with a redesign of the villa, from the communal bedroom to Soul Ties and every LED-lit nook and cranny in between. This summer, I’m back with a new reality TV house many of us know like it’s our own: the Summer House house.

Back in March, I shared an update on where I was in the process of writing my book, what it’s about, how I got here, and some of the deep, dark fears that were keeping me up at night along the way. I’m famously and embarrassingly terrible at coping with the feelings that come with doing something for the very first time, and writing a whole manuscript definitely challenged the part of me that wants to effortlessly “ta-da!” everything I do.